Chapter X: Part 10

Belfast has quite a number of municipal utilities. The city owns the gas works, the electric lighting plant, and all the street car lines, as well as the water supply. The gas works have proven to be a very profitable undertaking, and gas is furnished for sixty-seven cents a cubic foot, with a fair profit to the city. A municipal electric plant lights the streets and furnishes power for the street railway lines and also pays a profit. The street railway line, however, is not a profitable investment and is running behind under municipal management for several reasons.

The municipality also owns a large hall that will seat 2,097 persons, and a smaller hall that will seat 330. Each of these halls is rented for concerts, lectures, assemblies, exhibitions, conventions, balls, and for other purposes at a rate of twenty dollars per night for the smaller one and sixty dollars for the larger one, including light, heat, and attendance, and there is a good income from both. It also has a series of organ recitals in the large hall every winter, which are attended by audiences varying from six hundred to two thousand, who pay a nominal price for admission--from six to twelve cents, according to the seat--and thus the entertainments support themselves. The city also owns a number of private bathing houses, situated in different parts of the town, for which tickets can be bought for two cents and four cents, according to the accommodations. These are largely patronized by the working people, and are self-supporting. Altogether the municipal management of Belfast is admirable and affords examples which other cities may study with profit.

The advantages of Belfast for the manufacture of linen goods, the very damp climate which softens the thread so that it does not snap in the spindles or the looms and enables the fabric to be woven closer and softer, and the purity of the water for bleaching, were recognized long ago; and, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, when six hundred thousand Protestants fled from France, a party of Huguenot refugees under Louis Crommelin were invited to come over and introduce that industry. Crommelin belonged to a family that had woven linen for four hundred years. He was a man of great business ability, common sense, energy, and perseverance, and they called him "Crommelin the Great." Belfast certainly owes him a heavy debt, and it has not been paid. Although the Irish parliament passed a resolution thanking him for his services in 1707, his grave in the little churchyard at Lisburn, a suburban village, is marked only by an ordinary slab of stone. There is no monument to remind the people of the north of Ireland what they owe to his ability and devotion.

The business grew rapidly for the first century and a half, and as early as 1833 Belfast had eighty mills and was producing $25,000,000 worth of linen fabrics annually. In 1840 there were 250,000 spindles buzzing about this town, but the trade reached its maximum in the '70s, and has not increased much since. There are in all of Ireland about 35,000 looms and 900,000 spindles, all of them in this immediate vicinity, except two factories at Dublin, one at Cork, and one at Drogheda.

These are divided among about two hundred factories with about one hundred and twenty thousand operatives, of whom two-thirds are women. Their wages range from three to four dollars a week, and for men from six to seven dollars a week, the week's work under normal circumstances being fifty-five hours the year around, beginning at six o'clock in the morning, with an hour off for breakfast from eight to nine; another hour from one to two for lunch, and then they remain at work until six o'clock. An act of parliament does not permit operatives in textile factories to remain in the buildings where they work during the breakfast and lunch hours for any purpose whatever. If they bring their meals with them, they must eat them outside of the factory, for the purpose is to give them a change of air and require them to take a certain amount of exercise. Many of the companies here feed their hands in dining-halls connected with, but apart from, the workrooms.

Even these small wages have been increased from ten to twenty per cent within the last five years, and it is remarkable how people can live and support families upon such limited incomes. The wages are paid on Saturday noon--when a half-holiday is allowed, and the money is given to the hands in tin boxes. Each operative has his own number. As they pass the paymaster's window they call out their number, receive their box, take out the change, and throw the empty tin into a bin that is placed near the door for that purpose.

There are not less than 78,000 persons employed in the linen trade and its allied industries in the city of Belfast, and not less than 130,000 people are dependent directly or indirectly upon that industry for support. The situation is quite different there from many cities, because the fathers and husbands can find work in the shipyards and foundries, and thus the whole family is able to get employment. The law does not allow children under fourteen years of age to work in the factories, but a large number of boys and girls between fourteen and seventeen are engaged at wages from one dollar to two dollars a week, and much is done in the way of embroidery, hemstitching, and other forms of finishing in the households. The patterns are stamped on the cloth and the pieces are given out to women and girls to finish in their homes.

The employers exercise personal interest and have a paternal policy for the treatment of their employees, which does not occur often in the United States and other countries. This is largely due to the fact that generations have worked in the same mills for the same companies. Our manufacturing industries are not old enough for such an experience. Labor is not migratory as it is in the United States. It is customary for sons to follow the trades of their fathers, and when the daughters are old enough to go into the mill, the mothers leave it. The workmen there are satisfied with small wages; their standard of living is so much lower than in the United States that they can get along very well, as their fathers and ancestors have done for generations, upon their scanty earnings. Very few of them save any part of their wages. Not five per cent of the wage-earners of Belfast patronize the savings banks. They live from hand to mouth, and, knowing this fact, their employers are compelled to look after them in hard times. If they did not, the operatives who are out of employment would scatter and when work was resumed it would be difficult to fill their places.

The work of the operatives in linen factories is very trying on the health, because the atmosphere of the rooms is kept as damp as possible in order to soften the threads and make them more pliable. Few of the operatives live past middle life unless they have unusually strong constitutions.

More than half of the flax used in Belfast comes from Russia. Only about twelve thousand tons is raised in Ireland, and that entirely in Ulster Province, where fifty-five thousand acres are devoted to its cultivation. An average of forty thousand tons a year is imported from Holland, Belgium, and other countries, as well as Russia. S.S. Knabenshue of Toledo, the American consul, attempted to induce farmers in the Northwest of the United States, who grow flax for the seed, to ship over here the straw they throw away, but he has not succeeded in arousing any interest, although they might find a permanent and profitable market.

Until recently the spinning of the flax into thread was done by separate companies and the thread was sold to the weavers, but several years ago a combine was organized and many of the spinning plants went into a trust, which has enabled them to command better prices and be more independent. The linen manufacturers, however, are practically dependent upon the United States. We take more than half the products of Irish linen. The average for the last forty years has been 51.1 per cent sold to the United States, 19.3 to the British possessions, and 29.6 per cent to other foreign countries.

In 1907 the value of the linen shipped to the United States was $14,970,051 out of a total export of $26,895,014. In 1906 our purchases were about $1,000,000 less, but the proportion remains about the same, and American buyers may be always found at the Belfast hotels, although most of the big manufacturers have their agencies in New York.

Belfast has the largest ropewalk in the world, which employs three thousand hands, and for years was under the management of the late W.H. Smiles, a son of Samuel Smiles, author of "Self-Help" and other well-known books. It is a model institution, and among other features the firm maintains a large cookhouse and dining-room, where the employees and their families can obtain wholesome meals much cheaper than they could be supplied at their own homes. Such a benevolence would serve to decrease the drunkenness of Ireland and Scotland more than any other measures that could be adopted. Medical authorities agree that the principal cause of alcoholism is insufficient nourishment and ill-cooked food, which creates a craving for stimulants, and argue that if the working people could have better food they would spend less money for drink.

Belfast is the greatest producer of ginger ale, bottled soda, lemonade, and other aërated waters in the world, and ships them to every corner of the globe. There are sixteen factories engaged in that business. It is asserted there that soda water was invented in Belfast. Although there is no positive evidence to that effect, there is no doubt that ginger ale was first made by a druggist named Grattan in 1822, who started a factory here that is still running and has had many imitators. The great advantage found there is in the quality of the water, which is especially adapted to aëration, just as that at Burton-on-Trent is adapted to the manufacture of ale.

Belfast has two celebrated shipyards which launched 137,369 tons of steamers in 1907 and 150,428 tons in 1906. The firm of Harland & Wolff launched 74,115 tons, and Workman, Clark & Co., 63,254. Harland & Wolff ranked fourth in the order of British shipyards and Workman, Clark & Co. stand ninth in the list.

The latter firm built the first ocean turbine steamers and Harland & Wolff the first ocean greyhound, the _Oceanic_, in 1870, which was the pioneer of fast sailing on the Atlantic and a notable advance in the science of navigation. She was an epoch-making vessel from the point of view of naval architects, because of her general design and construction, being of much greater length in proportion to her beam than any that had ever been built up to that time, and she represented the first attempt to insure the maximum of comfort and luxury in ocean travel by sacrificing freight space to passenger accommodations and locating the saloons and cabins amidship. Since then all of the steamship companies have adopted the same plan, and the comfort and conveniences that are now found upon vessels have no doubt enormously increased the passenger traffic.

XVII

THE QUAINT OLD TOWN OF DERRY

Londonderry, usually called Derry, is an ancient burgh, in which much history has been enacted, and is unique in several respects among all the cities of the earth. It does not look like an Irish city at all. It resembles Plymouth, England. If you were dropped down from a balloon you might easily imagine yourself in that driving seaport, which is perfectly natural because everything in Derry is English and there is no sympathy with the rest of Ireland, or relationship either in race, religion, commerce, or customs. And the town is the property of the city of London, which accounts for the name.

It was called Derry in ancient times until King James I., in 1612, for money advanced him by the guilds of the city of London when he was hard up, gave them an area of two hundred thousand acres, confiscated from the O'Dohertys and the O'Neills for disloyalty. The grant includes every inch of land upon which Londonderry stands, "and the liberties thereof," which means jurisdiction over everything within a radius of two miles around. The aldermen of the city of London, that small but wealthy community which surrounds the Bank of England and the Mansion House in the world's metropolis, formed what is known as the Honorable Irish Society, composed of representatives of the different guilds, to hold the charter, and they hold it still. The aldermen of the city of London elect the governor of the society, who is now Sir Robert Newton, lord mayor of London, and the deputy governor, who is now a Mr. Gardiner, a resident of Londonderry, as is customary. The lord mayor's functions are nominal. The deputy governor exercises full authority, assisted by a council of twenty-four members, selected from among the most prominent residents. The municipal expenses are paid by the ordinary forms of taxation and the government is conducted like that of any other city in Ireland, but the Honorable Irish Society collects ground rent from every house within a radius of two miles. It also owns the fisheries in the River Foyle. The money is not devoted to the payment of ordinary municipal expenses, but goes into the treasury of the society in London, and a portion of it is devoted to public objects here. Magee College, the Presbyterian institution, receives a generous grant. Foyle College, a nonconformist institution, and the Roman Catholic college, each gets something, and liberal subscriptions are made for the benefit of hospitals and other charities and the churches of the city. The Irish Society was purely Protestant at the time of its organization, and is Protestant still, but it is impartial in its contributions to the different religious sects. There are two cathedrals, two bishops, one Roman Catholic, and one Church of Ireland, and the latter holds the ancient cathedral which, with an abbey, was founded by St. Columba in the year 546 and still is called by his name. In the pedestal of a group of statuary, known as "the Calvary," at St. Columba's Roman Catholic Church, is a famous relic known as St. Columba's stone, although his name is a misnomer. It is a massive block of gneiss, about six feet square, made with the prints of two feet, left and right, each about ten inches long.

This stone has been improperly associated in some way with St. Columba by the common people, but it has an equally interesting history, having been the crowning stone of the O'Neill clan for centuries. At his installation the newly chosen king was placed upon this stone, his bare feet in the footmarks, a willow wand was put into his hands as an emblem of the pure and gentle sway he should exercise over his people, an oath was administered to him by the chief ecclesiastic that he would preserve inviolable the ancient customs of the clan; that he would administer justice impartially among them, that he would sustain the right and punish the wrong, and that he would deliver the authority to his successor without resistance at the command of the tribe. Having taken this oath, "The O'Neill" turned his face to the four corners of Ireland to signify that he was ready to meet all foes from whatever quarter they might come; kissed his sword and his spear to signify that he was ready to use them wherever necessary, and then descended from the stone and was hailed with wild acclamations as the chief of the O'Neills, while his knights knelt before him pledging their loyalty and devotion.

At the time of Ireland's conversion to Christianity by St. Patrick that holy man visited Londonderry, where Owen O'Neill, the King of Ulster, was converted from paganism to the new faith and baptized. And, at the same time, St. Patrick consecrated this stone and blessed it for ever.

The long line of the O'Neill ancestry was terminated in 1607 by the flight of Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, after his unsuccessful rebellion against Queen Elizabeth, and the O'Dohertys, who were not so powerful, were compelled to surrender to the English. They were expelled from their lands, with all the followers of the Earl of Tyrone. All of the county was confiscated and sold or granted to Englishmen and Scotchmen, who came in and took possession and hold it still. Large areas still belong to the guilds of London, to whom it was granted for money loaned by them to King James I. The Tailors' Guild owns the city of Coleraine, a clean, busy town of seven thousand population, famous for its whisky and linen. It is governed by officials appointed by the Tailors' Guild in London, which collects ground rents from all the inhabitants and derives a considerable revenue from the salmon fisheries. The Fishmongers' Guild owns the town of Kilrea, the Drapers' Guild owns Draperstown, and other ancient organizations of merchants in the city of London own other towns and villages in this country which they obtained in a similar manner.

Londonderry is unique for being the only city in Ireland where the ancient walls and fortifications are preserved in the most careful manner and kept in perfect order with the antique guns mounted as they were at the time of the siege 225 years ago. They do not inclose the entire city, but only the ancient part of it, and are about a mile in length, twenty-four feet high and nine feet thick. The top of the walls between the bastions is laid out as a promenade and is the favorite resort of the inhabitants, who may be found there in large numbers every day after the close of business hours. Some of the business houses and residences open upon the top of the walls, as do several popular resorts. The walls are pierced by several monumental gates, which remain precisely as they were in ancient times, and the old guns, which date back to 1635 and 1642, are kept as relics, precious as the Declaration of Independence in Washington. The bastions have been turned into little gardens, and here and there in the angles shrubs and flowers have been planted.

One of the guns which bears the name of "Roaring Meg" was presented to the city of Londonderry by the fishmongers of London and is the most precious object in the town, because of its effective work in the siege of 1689, when King James II., with an Irish army, besieged the city for 105 days, but its determined defenders succeeded in preventing his entrance. They suffered famine and pestilence, and were reduced to eating hides, tallow, and the flesh of cats and dogs. During the siege only eight of the defenders were killed by the enemy, but ten thousand persons perished from hunger, disease, and exposure in three and a half months. When the siege was lifted by the appearance of a squadron of ships laden with arms, ammunition, and provisions, King James and his army retired from one of the most important episodes in the history of Ireland. You can still see evidences of that terrible struggle. The cathedral is decorated with relics and trophies, including a bombshell which came over the wall, containing the terms of capitulation offered by King James. The laconic reply of the Rev. George Walker, rector of the Episcopal church, who was in command of the citizens, was "No surrender."

A statue of Rev. Mr. Walker, whose courage, fortitude, and apostolic influence saved the city, was long ago erected upon the bastion which bore the heaviest fire during the siege. His noble figure stands upon the top of a shaft ninety feet high in the attitude which he is said to have assumed in the most terrible emergency, to revive and sustain the faltering courage of his parishioners. In one hand he grasps a Bible; the other is pointing down the river toward the approaching squadron of deliverance in the distant bay. At another point upon the walls is a Gothic castellated structure erected by public subscription as a clubhouse for the boys and young men of Londonderry. It is known as Apprentices' Hall, and was erected as a memorial to the courage and foresight of a group of thirteen young apprentices who, during the excitement caused by the approach of the king's army, had the presence of mind to drop the heavy gate without instruction from their elders, and thus made it possible to defend the city against the assault.

Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Lundy, who was in command of the garrison at the time, was a coward, and insisted upon surrendering the city to the king's army, but was prevented from doing so by Rev. Mr. Walker, rector of the Episcopal church, and Adam Murray, an elder in the Presbyterian church. Lundy persisted in his purpose, carried on secret negotiations with the enemy, and was preparing to open the gates when his intentions were discovered. He escaped in disguise by climbing down the branches of a pear tree which grew against the wall on the east side.

Twice a year, on the 18th of December and the 12th of August, the dates of the beginning and the end of the siege, the apprentice boys of the city lead a procession of all the Protestant organizations to attend divine service at the Episcopal Cathedral and then pass the rest of the day as we celebrate the Fourth of July. At nightfall an effigy of Colonel Lundy is always burned in a prominent place. These celebrations are deplored by thoughtful people, as keeping alive religious animosities, but of recent years the collisions which used to occur between the Orange societies and the Roman Catholics have been avoided. The population of Londonderry is very largely Protestant.

The cathedral is an ugly old building, but quite interesting because of its historic associations and the relics it contains.

Magee College, the leading Presbyterian institution of Ireland, occupies a beautiful site about fifteen minutes' walk from the center of the city. It was built and endowed by the widow of Rev. William Magee of Lurgan, was opened in 1865, and is under the care of the general assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church. There are several departments, a staff of seven professors, and an average of two hundred and fifty students, most of whom are studying for the Presbyterian ministry. Magee is the only college in Ireland which has been founded and supported entirely by private benefactions. It has never received a dollar from the state, although there is an annual grant from the Irish Society, which owns the city of Londonderry. Under a recent act of parliament it is united with Queen's College, Belfast, on equal terms in the new university bill. There is no religious test for students or professors, although the latter, upon accepting appointment, are required to sign a pledge that they "will not do, write, or say anything which might tend in any way to subvert the Christian religion or the belief of any person therein." Magee has always taken a high stand for scholarship, and although the building is small it is noble in design, massive in construction, and well equipped for its purpose.

The principal business of Londonderry is to make shirts, collars, and cuffs, which are shipped to Australia, South Africa, India, and other British colonies. There are several large factories which employ about two thousand men to do the heavy work and twenty thousand women who do the stitching and laundering by old-fashioned methods. An American buyer I met in Belfast spoke rather contemptuously of the Londonderry shirt factories, which, he declared, "are not in it for a minute" with those of the United States. He insists that a single factory in Troy makes more shirts and collars than all the factories in Londonderry combined, and that by their modern machinery and processes the Troy factories can make and finish half a dozen shirts while they are making one there.

Londonderry is unique for another reason. The ordinary relations of husband and wife and their domestic responsibilities are reversed here. Many women work in the shirt factories whose husbands stay at home, keep the house, do the cooking and washing and take care of the children, because there is nothing else for them to do. There is a large excess of women in the population. They number two to one man, which is not due to natural causes, but because women are attracted here from the neighboring towns and counties to obtain work in the factories, and the young men have to leave Londonderry and go elsewhere to find employment.

Many of them go to the United States and Canada. Three lines of American steamers touch here every week--the Anchor Line, the Allan Line, and the Dominion Line--which offer low rates of transportation and carry many third-class passengers away.

The Giant's Causeway, of which much has been written, for it is one of the wonders of the world, lies on the north coast of Ireland, about two hours by rail from Belfast, and there are several trains daily to the nearest town, called Portrush. There is an excellent hotel there, owned by the railway company, which ranks as one of the best in Ireland, and several other smaller hotels, inns, and boarding-houses innumerable for the accommodation of the crowds of people who go there every year as "trippers" and to spend their holidays.

The Giant's Causeway, about five miles from Portrush, is reached by an electric railroad, which, I am told, was the first ever successfully operated in all the world. It was built in 1883, designed by the late Sir William Siemens, the celebrated electrician, and operated with power generated by the water of the Bush River. It was originally on the third-rail system, but was changed into an ordinary overhead trolley seven or eight years ago. The first trolley railroad was built in Richmond, Va., three years later than this.

The most interesting object at Portrush is an ancient but well preserved Irishman of the type you see in pictures and formerly on the stage, who stands at the street corner, where the railway tracks take a curve, with a big dinner bell and rings it with almost superhuman energy whenever the cars approach from either direction. This occupation engages him from some unknown hour in the morning until some unknown hour in the night, and if he ever eats or sleeps or rests that fact is not easily ascertained by a stranger. There are no bells on the cars, no alarm can be given for some reason, but nobody ever complained that he was not warned of danger at the crossing by the bell ringer, who seems to have a profound sense of his responsibilities.

It is a delightful ride along rocky cliffs that have been worn into fantastic forms by the incessant pounding of the ocean, and, although many people express their disappointment at the Giant's Causeway, it is well worth a visit because it is unique in geology. A stream of lava, at the most twenty-six hundred feet wide and about fifteen miles long, was arrested by some means upon the extreme north coast of Ireland, and in cooling took the form of detached columns from six to thirty feet long and from eight to twenty-four inches in diameter. There are more than forty thousand of these columns in three parallel terraces, standing upright and presenting a smooth surface, but they are all separate and no two of them are of the same size or shape. There is said to be only one triangle, only one nonagon, and only one of diamond shape in all the forty thousand. Most of them are pentagons and hexagons and octagons.

In one place on the cliff there has been a landslide, which has thrown the pillars in that locality into horizontal positions, but elsewhere along the coast they are upright. At what is called the Giant's Loom the columns are exposed for about thirty feet, but the rest of them form a curious and extraordinary mosaic flooring, stretching out into the sea and extending for several miles with remarkable regularity. Each column is absolutely distinct from the rest of the forty thousand; none of them are monoliths so far as can be seen, but they are divided into drums about two feet in thickness, which fit into each other like a ball and socket. The geologists generally agree that these extraordinary forms are the result of the contraction and division of the lava in cooling, and the process may be illustrated by the experiments with ordinary laundry starch, which takes the form of similar miniature columns when it cools.

Mr. S.S. Knabenshue, American Consul at Belfast, has been searching out the ancestry of the late President McKinley, who lived in the village Conagher in County Antrim in the north of Ireland. The family were Scotch Presbyterians and came over at some date unknown, and settled upon a little farm of forty-two acres. Generation after generation were born and lived and died there, leaving no record but that of honest, hardworking, God-fearing tillers of the soil. The family burying lot is in Derrykeighan Churchyard, where, among others, rest the remains of Francis McKinlay, who was executed for participation in the Revolution of 1798, and those of his wife and daughter. Francis J. Bigger, a widely known Irish archæologist and historian, has traced the descent of the late President from a great-great-grandfather who emigrated in 1743 and settled in York County, Penn. His son David McKinley emigrated to Ohio in 1814, and had a son named James whose son, William McKinley (Senior), was the father of the late President.

The cabin in which the family lived for generations is now used as a cow-shed, the present owner of the property having built himself a more pretentious residence. It has three windows and a door facing on the street. The door opens directly into a large room, which was the dining room and kitchen; the two bedrooms on each side of the fireplace have been turned into cow stables, the windows being cut down and replaced by doors so that the animals can enter from the outside.

In the Irish village at the recent Franco-British Exposition in London the McKinley cottage was reproduced, and the original doors, door frames, windows, attic floor, staircase, and the iron crane and the big pot from the fireplace all came from the real cottage, having been sold to the owner. Consequently there is nothing left of the original cottage except the stone walls and the thatched roof.

XVIII

IRISH EMIGRATION AND COMMERCE

A gentleman from Erie, Penn., who had been traveling about Ireland for several weeks made a suggestion which seemed to me to be worth adopting, and I proposed it to several organizations for promoting the welfare of Ireland without exciting much enthusiasm. There seems to be an apprehension that somebody will make political capital out of it, and very little is done without such motives. Politics and whisky are the curses of Ireland. However, the plan is to apply to Ireland the principle of "the old home week" that has been so popular and successful in New Hampshire and other parts of New England, only it is proposed to make it a month instead of a week and have special days set apart for reunions in the different counties, at which as many natives of those counties and children of natives as possible may come over from the United States to visit their old homes and birthplaces. They can thus renew their acquaintances with their former neighbors and the playmates of their childhood, revive their interest in Irish affairs, and stimulate the patriotism and love of "the ould sod" which are marked characteristics of the race.

It would be easy to make arrangements with the different steamship lines to give low rates, not only those which touch regularly at Queenstown, but also the Holland, Antwerp, Italian, Scandinavian, and other lines which go by but do not stop at Irish ports. The tide of emigration is westward and there are comparatively few steerage and second-class passengers going east on the Cunard and White Star steamers that touch at Queenstown. The steamship companies would make a low rate for the round trip which would give an opportunity for thousands of Irish-born citizens of the United States to spend a short vacation across the sea visiting their old homes and the homes of their fathers. The fact that everybody is doing the same would be a great incentive, and for a few weeks Ireland would be crowded with her former sons and daughters.

A very important result of such a visitation would be to leave in Ireland large sums which would quicken business, increase the demand for labor, create a market for everything that is made or grows, and flood Ireland with money. Each visitor would contribute his share, although it might be a little, but the total of the expenditures of such pilgrims would be enormous and create a condition of prosperity greater than Ireland has ever seen. Five million dollars has been expended in New Hampshire by visitors from other States since the Old Home Week celebrations and the advertisement of abandoned farms were first undertaken. If that amount of money should be spent in Ireland it would be of everlasting benefit to the people. If ten thousand visitors came from the United States and spent only a hundred dollars each, which is a very low average, it would leave a million dollars in circulation here.

It might be natural also, as has occurred in New Hampshire, that many natives who went to the States in their childhood and have become wealthy and are now approaching the period of their rest and leisure would purchase homes in Ireland and spend their declining years in the scenes of their youth as Mr. Croker is doing, and three or four other persons I met. There was a man at the hotel from Chicago looking for a country place. He expects to invest a hundred thousand dollars in an Irish home somewhere near Dublin. Then, think of the contributions that would be made in aid of the churches, the benevolent institutions, and other charities as well as to insure the comfort and happiness of individuals in whom the visitors might be interested. One might suggest many other ways in which Ireland might be benefited by such celebrations, and those who participate in them will certainly have a deep sense of gratification for their share. Perhaps the most important result would be to correct the misapprehensions that are almost universal concerning the material condition of Ireland. Things are much different in many respects from what Irish-Americans have been led to believe by newspaper articles and other publications, and it is right and necessary that misapprehensions should be corrected.

If the month of July, three or four years ahead, were selected for reunions of the sons of Ireland, it would give sufficient time to make the necessary arrangements, and local organizations in the different countries could fix their own dates most convenient for reunions of those who would come from those particular localities. Irishmen in Australia, Canada, South Africa, and other parts of the world would be glad to join their American cousins in carrying out such a plan. I met an American priest at Cork who was enthusiastic over the suggestion and declared that twenty families in his own parish would undoubtedly come over on such an occasion to visit their old homes. And he expressed the surprise that I felt about the improved conditions of the Irish people and the prospects for peace and happiness and prosperity in the island.

There are now nearly two million natives of Ireland in the United States, and nearly six million people whose parents were born there or who were born there themselves.

The following statement will show the number of natives of Ireland in the United States as returned by each census since 1850:

1850 961,719
1860 1,611,304
1870 1,855,827
1880 1,854,571
1890 1,871,509

The census of 1900 shows 3,991,417 citizens of the United States both of whose parents were born in Ireland.

Since the census of 1900 was taken the average arrivals from Ireland have been about thirty-eight thousand per year, which has added at least three hundred thousand to the total of 1900, and, making due allowance for deaths and departures, increased the number of natives in the United States to nearly two millions.

The improved conditions in Ireland during the last few years have caused a considerable decrease in emigration. At the present time a smaller number of people are seeking work in other countries than ever before since the famine of the '40s. This is the most significant evidence of the prosperity of the country and the success of the government in promoting contentment and improving the condition of the peasants by the enactment of the land laws and the work of the Congested Districts Board, of which I have written at length in previous letters.

Low tide in emigration was reached during the first six months of 1908, when the total number departing from Ireland was only 13,511, being a decrease of 8,713 in comparison with the corresponding period of 1907. Of these 9,974 went to the United States and 1,598 to Canada; 1,868 went from Leinster Province, 3,762 from Munster, 4,611 from Ulster, and 3,270 from Connaught.

The total number of emigrants from Ireland in 1907 was 39,082, but unless something extraordinary happens the total for this year will fall below 25,000.

During the last fifteen years the population of Ireland has decreased 292,370, and during the last fifty years it has fallen off three and one half millions. During the last fifteen years the population of Scotland has increased 689,825 and that of England and Wales has increased 5,461,197. The birth rate in Ireland is larger than it is in either England or Scotland, and the death rate is about the same, so that the decrease in population has been entirely due to emigration.

Since the distribution of the great estates in Ireland among the tenants in small farms there is a growing complaint concerning the lack of labor; and the emigration of young men to the United States and the migration of farm laborers who spend from five to nine months in Scotland every year where wages are higher than in Ireland are creating a very serious problem.

There are in Ireland about 400,000 farms, of which 165,000, embracing three-fourths of the total area, average more than thirty acres, and that is all one man can cultivate. All farms more than thirty acres in extent, and many of smaller area, require hired labor, which has usually received about 12 shillings per week until the last two or three years, when farm wages were advanced to 14 shillings and 16 shillings a week--that is, $3.50 and $4. The recent census shows that 217,652 men are employed as laborers upon these 165,000 farms and that an average of 76,870 extra hands are employed during the harvest. During the last three years, although the area under cultivation has been growing smaller annually, it has been difficult to obtain a sufficient amount of labor to carry on the harvests, and wages, in many cases, have advanced to 18 shillings a week.

Notwithstanding the demand for home labor, 24,312 persons, including 750 women, left Ireland in May, 1907, and went to England and Scotland, where they remained to work on the farms until the following November. Most of them went from the northwestern part of Ireland, from counties Mayo, Roscommon, Donegal, Galway, and Sligo, which have the least land under cultivation in the country.

An investigation made by the estates commissioners showed that 3,245 of these persons had holdings of five acres, 987 had holdings of between five and ten acres, 912 between ten and fifteen acres, 458 between fifteen and twenty acres, 471 between twenty and twenty-five acres, 93 between twenty-five and thirty acres, 102 between thirty and forty acres, and 75 had farms of more than forty acres. Most of them left their little farms to be cultivated by their wives and sons and daughters during their absence. Among the migrants were 9,308 sons of farmers, who work on their father's farms when they are in Ireland, but go to England and Scotland because they are able to make more money than by staying at home.

The average wages of these migrants was 26 shillings a week, and they varied from 20 to 30 shillings, according to intelligence, with food, lodging, and in many cases their traveling expenses one way. It is customary for the Scotch and English farmers to pay the railway fare over and leave the migrant to buy his ticket home in the fall. Most of the migrants save the larger part of their wages. It is estimated that the average net savings was £12, or $60 per person, and that the total amount taken back to Ireland at the end of the season was about £275,000, or $1,375,000 in American money. These savings are sufficient to keep their families through the rest of the year with the aid of their small farms, fishing, weaving, lacemaking, and other home industries.

According to the reports of the estates commission, the number of farm hands employed in 1871, in addition to the owners of the land and their families, was 446,782, or more than twice as many as are employed at present. In 1881 the number was 300,091. The number of occasional laborers or extra harvest hands employed in 1871 was 189,829, as against 76,870 employed in 1907, which indicates in a striking manner the decay of agriculture in Ireland.

At the same time wages have increased 30 per cent and the cost of boarding farm hands has increased 40 per cent. The hands now demand better accommodations and better food, and everything they require is much more expensive than it was thirty years ago. The average wages for steady farm hands in Ireland with board, according to the official statistics, is $12 a month, while ten years ago labor was plenty at $9 a month. Wages of household servants are about the same and have advanced as rapidly.

The census statistics of Ireland are quite interesting and show that for the last ten years the population has remained fairly stationary, the excess of births over deaths making up the loss by emigration. The latest vital statistics available are for the year 1905, which show a population of 4,391,565, an excess of births over deaths of 27,671; an emigration of 30,676, and a net decrease in population of 2,915. The following table shows the number of births, deaths, and emigrants for ten years:

Years Births Deaths Emigrants

1895 106,113 84,395 48,703
1896 107,641 75,700 39,995
1897 106,664 83,839 32,535
1898 105,457 82,404 32,241
1899 103,900 79,699 41,232
1900 101,459 87,606 45,288
1901 100,976 79,119 39,613
1902 101,863 77,676 40,190
1903 101,831 77,358 39,789
1904 103,811 79,513 36,902
1905 102,832 75,071 30,676
------- ------ ------
Average 103,811 80,731 39,549

Through the efforts of Mr. Boland, M.P., the foreign commerce of Ireland is now given independently in the statistical reports of the United Kingdom, and the following table shows the imports and exports for recent years:

Imports Exports

1904 £53,185,523 £49,398,536
1905 54,793,183 51,174,318
1906 56,365,299 55,598,597
1907 60,521,245 61,617,225

It will be noticed that there was a considerable increase every year in both columns, but the increase in exports was considerably greater than in imports. This increase was particularly noticeable in live stock shipments to England. In 1905 there were 1,852,423 head of horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and swine shipped from Ireland to England, and in 1907 the shipments had increased to 2,025,292 head.

The exports of butter also increased, and Ireland now has the lead among the nations that contribute to the British poultry market. In 1907 the value of the poultry exported from Ireland to Great Britain was £725,441.

Ireland ought to furnish all the bacon that the British people eat. Irish bacon is the best in the world, and brings the highest prices, but, notwithstanding that fact, more bacon was imported into England from the United States, from Denmark, and from Canada than from Ireland.

The exports of manufactured goods--linens, woolens, and other textiles--from Ireland during the fiscal year 1907, exceeded £20,000,000. The imports of similar articles amounted to £27,000,000. The Irish import a vast amount of bacon from the United States when they ought to supply their own market.

The following table will show the commerce between the United States and Ireland during the last three years:

Imports from Exports to
Ireland Ireland

1906 $11,456,739 $10,824,350
1907 12,023,469 9,593,658
1908 8,899,799 10,101,065

The falling off of the exports from Ireland in 1908 was due entirely to the panic of that year in the United States, which caused an almost total stagnation of trade for several months.

There is no limit to the demand for Irish agricultural produce at good prices, but the cultivated area of the island continues to diminish annually, and the area given up to pasturage and the breeding of cattle and sheep increases. The Irish farmer has an unlimited market for bacon, hams, butter, eggs, poultry, potatoes, and other vegetables in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, and other great manufacturing cities which are now very largely fed by Holland and Denmark. More eggs and poultry, more butter and bacon, are imported into England from Denmark than from Ireland, notwithstanding the difference in distance and cost of transportation. The provision dealers of the great manufacturing cities of England always have agents in Ireland, and the Department of Agriculture and the Irish Agricultural Organization Society are both active and efficient in securing and cultivating markets for Irish products. They are advancing large sums of money to establish co-operative dairies and to improve the dairy cattle, the swine, and poultry of Ireland, but many of the farmers are indifferent to their opportunities and with the happy-go-lucky characteristic of the Irish race are happy and satisfied so long as they have enough to feed their own mouths.

Sir Horace Plunkett, who has been especially active in trying to improve the condition of the farmers of Ireland, says: "The settlement of the land question and the new system of governmental aid to agriculture are proceeding rapidly and doing great good, but along neither of those two lines of national advancement, nor along both combined, is agricultural prosperity to be attained. The result depends entirely upon voluntary individual effort and co-operation. The British market will take all the produce we can send, and the more we send of uniform quality--and this can be done by co-operation--the more it will pay for our produce. It follows that every dairy farmer in Ireland is not only interested in seeing that every farmer in his district forwards the best butter he can produce, but he is also concerned to see that farmers in other districts do the same. The ownership of the land by the occupier, which has been brought about by legislation, will not of itself give the Irish farmer the prosperity he hopes for. It is not only the farms, but the habits of the people upon the land which need improvement. Capable under certain influences of surprising industry, they lack the qualities which secure the fruits of industry, because their education and economic circumstances have not developed the industrial habit. They are surely clever in their resourcefulness and shrewd in their bargainings, but as a rule in the management of their farms and commercial dealings they display a total lack of the most elementary principles of either technical or business knowledge. In spite of a passionate devotion to their country, they emigrate to America whenever they can obtain the money to pay their passage, and seem to have no fixed purpose or ambition to develop the resources that lie around them."

The factories of Ireland are confined almost entirely to the northern province of Ulster, although a few mills and other textile manufactories are scattered in other parts of the island. The textile and other manufacturing industries have enjoyed unprecedented and extraordinary prosperity for eight or ten years.

Household industries, particularly the manufacture of handwoven tweeds and various kinds of lace, received a gratifying impetus from the advertising obtained at the Irish village at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, under the patronage of Lady Aberdeen, who for twenty years had interested herself in the practical and successful development of lacemaking and hand weaving of woolen fabrics. Her energetic efforts have been supplemented by the Royal Irish Industries Association and the Royal Dublin Society, both of which hold annual exhibitions, offer prizes for excellence of design and workmanship, and provide agencies for the sale of homemade and convent-made products in London and other cities.

The Congested Districts Board has given much practical aid and encouragement by loaning money to people who cannot afford to buy looms, by sending teachers in industries throughout the island into the households, by establishing fixed schools at central points, and by furnishing thread and other materials to lacemakers and weavers, for which it collects payments after the product is sold. All through the poor districts of Ireland, where for centuries there has been a desperate struggle for existence, thousands of looms and spinning-wheels may now be found in the cottages of the poor peasants, where both the parents and the children have been instructed in spinning and in weaving by government teachers. And in almost every village on the west coast there is a lace school attended by from twelve to fifty young women under the instruction of a patient and tactful teacher working with thread advanced to them without payment by the Congested Districts Board. The lace produced is sold for them at the agencies of the board, and they are thus enabled to contribute several pounds a month to the incomes of their families.

It is a familiar joke that our principal imports from Ireland are priests, politicians, policemen, and baseball pitchers, but they are not all by any means. I do not know what other country has furnished so many famous Americans--generals, admirals, statesmen, politicians, financiers, merchant princes, actors, writers, lawyers, and other professional men too numerous to mention. If you will look through the list of the generals during our Civil War, if some one will make up a catalogue of millionaires and mining kings and empire-builders and captains of industry they will realize that all the Irishmen who have come to the United States have not gone into politics or pugilism or baseball teams. I must say, however, that the Irish have almost the monopoly of the prize ring and the baseball diamond.

Cardinal Logue made a speech upon his return from America in 1908, in which he discussed this subject at length and related what he had himself seen of Irish millionaires and other successful business men in the United States. He spoke particularly of New York City, and alluded with gratification to the fact that the subway of New York City and the new tunnel under the Hudson River were both built by Irishmen.

"I was proud to know," he said, "of the vast number of our countrymen who were honored citizens of the United States. They have asserted themselves, especially in New York, and occupy the leading positions there. You find Irishmen prominent in every walk of life, you find them among the most distinguished of the judges on the bench, you find them among the most successful barristers, you find them among the most eminent in medicine and in the other learned professions, and then I found that the largest contracts in New York [and he might have said in the entire country] had been allotted to Irishmen, because of their ability to organize and carry out great works. I visited the tunnel under the Hudson and was proud to think that that great work had been carried out by an Irishman who had carved out his own advancement and had made his own way in life by his native talent and genius. Then, again, when they were undertaking the stupendous work of building subways under the city of New York they gave that contract to an Irishman, who succeeded in completing it to the satisfaction of everybody, and it was one of the greatest works ever undertaken by man.